


On Let's Plays

by Sparky_Lurkdragon



Category: No Fandom, Video Games - Fandom
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Archived from sparkylurkdragon blog, Let's Play, Let's Play Meta, Meta Essay, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2019-10-08 10:11:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17384543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sparky_Lurkdragon/pseuds/Sparky_Lurkdragon
Summary: A stream-of-consciousness musing on why I watch and make Let's Plays.





	On Let's Plays

I’ve been thinking lately about why I enjoy watching people play videogames just as much as I enjoy playing them myself, and why I enjoy making my own Let’s Plays via the stream.

What follows is a fairly stream-of-consciousness musing on the whole topic. I think the very heart of the matter, beyond hanging out with friends when I’m streaming, beyond discovering games I might otherwise have no interest in, is concerns about games preservation, and more than that,  _story_  preservation.

The main thing that games bring that’s new to storytelling is the interactive nature of it. Watching me play Shadow of the Colossus, watching a first-time run of a hard Super Mario World hack, or watching someone do a speedrun of an obscure NES game, one does lose that. There are things the player will skip that maybe you’d like to see, or aspects about it being a game that are extremely hard to get across if you’re watching. You do lose something watching instead of playing.

But… you lose something watching a recording of a play in your house rather than in the theatre. You lose something seeing a photograph of a landmark instead of seeing it with your own eyes. You lose something reading about an event rather than seeing it right in front of you.

Does any of that necessarily matter to understanding what that play or that landmark or that event was about? To understanding its heart on a deep level? No. I don’t think it does. 

Watching someone play a game is, sure,  _different_ from actually playing it, but if you play enough games that you go seeking Let’s Plays you’re probably fairly ‘game literate’. If someone explains that a game’s controls are slightly clunky for this and that reason, or alternately that they’re very precise, you understand what they mean and can extrapolate what playing it would be like. If someone explains that this platforming level is unfair because the hitbox on the player character is placed oddly, you can understand that. If someone starts laughing in joy because a game just showed them something spectacular as a result of their actions, you can understand that and might well be laughing along with them.

For me, watching Let’s Plays, at least in a longplay style (vs a challenge run or speedrun style, that is, and those are cool and important stories too but not the subject of this post), is like going to listen to someone tell a story. Maybe it’s not how I’d tell it, and maybe I can sense where they’re leaving out some details, but fundamentally I’m either there because I like the storyteller or I like the story. In many cases, I like both, but a great story can survive being told poorly, and a great storyteller can make even the worst story a wonder to behold.

Heck, a lot of times it makes me want to go ‘read the original’ if I haven’t already and maybe even tell my own version. Making Let’s Plays is another way of telling stories that I love or at least find interesting. I want to show people Skies of Arcadia, and Shadow of the Colossus, and Metroid, and Ecco the Dolphin, and all the others. 

Would it be cool if everyone who saw one of my LPs went on to play the games themselves? Absolutely! I didn’t write these stories, I didn’t program them, I didn’t draw anything or come up with one puzzle or compose a single note of music. I’m just telling the story, and if you watch me play, you’re hearing it secondhand. I want these stories to keep being told, in the original form if possible. I hope that we preserve plays, preserve landmarks, preserve videogames: there are few better ways to experience any story than straight from the original creators. 

But not everyone has the same access I do, or the same skillset (and playing videogames, even as bumbling as I tend to be, is very much a skillset), and games preservation is in a lot of ways lacking to completely abysmal. I don’t want these stories to die because the actors retired, because the landmark wore away, because the hardware needed to play them failed. 

And so, I also hope that as many people as possible record them in as many ways as possible, too. If I can film that play, or take a photograph of that landmark, or make a Let’s Play of that obscure Dreamcast game, I’m going to do it.


End file.
